Mediagazer: How one publisher is stopping academics from sharing their research (Andrea Peterson/Washington Post)

1:55 AM ET, December 20, 2013

Top News:

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

Pledging Clarity, The Times Plunges Into Native Advertising — After months of preparation and scrutiny, “native advertising” is about to arrive at The Times. That practice, much discussed in media circles, has been the subject of a recent Federal Trade Commission public workshop under the appropriate name, “Blurred Lines.”

Discussion: Capital New York, counternotions.com, @peter_tl, @edmundlee and @counternotions

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

Publisher's Letter Explains Limits on Branded Content at The Times — Seeking to allay potential newsroom concerns about the introduction of a digital product called native advertising, the publisher of The New York Times on Thursday said that features like a color bar and the words “Paid Post” …

Discussion: Publishing Executive …, AdExchanger, FishbowlNY, Digiday, Poynter, @carrollbogert and @romenesko

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Buyouts as Times sales chief charts her course — The New York Times has completed a round of business-side buyouts, Capital has learned. — Three sources familiar with the matter put the total number of buyouts at around 20. The sources said long-serving sales executives like Jill Georgevski …

Discussion: @joepompeo

Michael Sebastian / AdAge: The New York Times Is Going to Label the Hell Out of its Native Ads

Alan Rusbridger / Guardian:

Guardian editor contrasts the U.S. public debate after NSA leaks with Britain's apathy — Obama's NSA review gives the lie to Britain's timid platitudes: a debate is possible — In the US, the official response to Snowden's revelations celebrates journalism and calls for real change.

Discussion: @robobr7, @antloewenstein, @juliansimpson1, @jeffjarvis, The Daily Caller, Wired, Crikey and Hit & Run

Jay Rosen / Pressthink:

A First Look at NewCo's structure — Today Pierre Omidyar announced some details about how his new venture in news will be organized. My summary and explanation... First, the official release: … As I previously explained to readers of PressThink, I am an adviser to Omidyar's company …

Discussion: Omidyar Group, Gigaom, Poynter, Capital New York, Forbes, The Huffington Post, FishbowlNY, Guardian, Mediaite, The Verge, @raju, @mathewi, @_alastair, @agolis, @jayrosen_nyu, @bbhorne, @jaredbkeller and @zseward

Nicole Levy / Capital New York: Greenwald hints at future of Omidyar enterprise

Leo Mirani / Quartz:

Between a quarter and a third of everything on the web is copied from somewhere else — There's a lot of junk on the web. There is also a lot of good stuff on the web. And then there is the stuff that's been lifted from the good and dropped amid the dross—the aggregation, the block-quotes, the straight-off copy-paste jobs.

Discussion: @kathrynschulz

Khoi Vinh / Medium:

What streaming music lacks: the metadata of analog days and the personalization of now — What Streaming Music Can Be — Getting past the breadth of Spotify's catalog to more meaningful connections with the music — One gift that I won't be giving to loved ones this holiday season is music, sadly.

Discussion: Subtraction.com and MacStories

Martin Langeveld / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Understanding the billionaire media gambles — Our journalism business never ceases to provide surprises and fodder for speculation — that's what makes this year-end round of prediction posts so much fun and, often, so far off base. For example, none of the Lab's prognosticators …

Discussion: @martinlangeveld

Matthew Lynley / BuzzFeed:

WSJ's revamped tech section to be called “WSJD”, launches in January — The Wall Street Journal's Answer To AllThingsD Launches Next Month — The Journal's revamped tech coverage section launches next month . The company is launching a global conference, too. — Jason Reed / Reuters

Discussion: @ryanlawler, @lexnfx, Talking Biz News and Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Katie Zhu / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Moving responsive design beyond screen size — Imagine opening NPR's app on your phone to read a story before heading to work. You glance at the clock and realize you're running late, so you grab your keys and rush out the door. As you start walking, the app starts playing the audio story …

Alexis Sobel Fitts / Columbia Journalism Review:

Prime-time's global warming omission — A study shows that newscasters don't mention climate change when covering the weather, but whether they should is a larger question — Climate change is rarely covered in the mainstream press, but getting a hard number on just how often …

Discussion: The Huffington Post

Meg James / Los Angeles Times:

Katie Couric's syndicated talk show to end after this season — Katie Couric's syndicated television talk show has been canceled. — Disney/ABC Television and Couric jointly announced the move Thursday afternoon. — “While production will continue on “Katie” through June 2014 …

Discussion: The Wrap, Capital New York, TVNewser, Deadline.com, New York Times and Mediaite

Andrea Peterson / Washington Post:

How one publisher is stopping academics from sharing their research — One of the world's largest academic publishers has launched a wide-ranging takedown spree, demanding that several different universities take down their own scholars' research. — Elsevier is a commercial firm …

Discussion: TechCrunch

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The coming disruption of television news — For commercial news media in the Western world, the underlying thrust in 2014 remains the same that it was 2013 and has been for a decade or more. It is a move towards a world in which we will have more media — including stakeholder media serving …

Discussion: @rasmus_kleis and @niemanlab

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

Times Will Study Potential Changes to Its Sunday Magazine — The New York Times Magazine will be reassessed by the newspaper's managing editor, Dean Baquet, and Deborah Needleman, the editor of T Magazine, for the next three months before a new editor is appointed, according to a memo sent to staff.

Discussion: Capital New York, Poynter, Gawker, WWD, The New York Observer, @digiphile, The Huffington Post, @carr2n and @romenesko

Kristen Hare / Poynter:

ASNE president expects ‘concrete steps’ after meeting with White House about access — On Tuesday, press organizations met with officials at the White House to discuss access to the president. Frustrated news organizations hand-delivered a letter to the White House in late November …

Discussion: TheHill, Mediaite and Politico

Mike Shields / Adweek:

Questionable Traffic Seems to Follow This Video Company Everywhere — In mid-2012, the online content/distribution firm Touchstorm was pushing further into original Web video, particularly for its lifestyle site Howdini. Like many in the industry, Howdini was attracting solid CPMs but struggled to get enough views.

Discussion: @digitalshields and AdExchanger

Rick Edmonds / Poynter:

Advance Local president: ‘signs of success are everywhere’ — Privately held Advance has been mostly mum on the results of its cutback of print editions in most markets and the relaunch of its newspapers as digital media companies. But in a year-end letter to employees …

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Huffington touts ‘third metric’ success — If 2012 was the Year of the Pulitzer for The Huffington Post, 2013 was undoubtedly the Year of the Third Metric, a wellness and lifestyle mindset that has become an obsession of founding mother and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington.

Discussion: Folio

Reuters:

Exclusive: Dish eyes 2014 bid for T-Mobile - sources — (Reuters) - Dish (DISH.O) is considering making a bid for T-Mobile (TMUS.N) next year, according to people close to the matter, in what would be the satellite TV provider's second attempt in as many years at acquiring a major wireless operator …

Discussion: Electronista, GeekWire, NEWSFACTOR, Ars Technica, Fox Business, ZDNet, The Verge and Gigaom

Chris Cillizza / The Fix:

Why Washington journalism doesn't suck — Of late, there's a cottage industry blooming in political journalism: Blasting political journalism. — The latest example came in piece that Sam Youngman of the Lexington Herald-Leader wrote for Politico Magazine entitled “Take This Town and Shove It”.

Discussion: Slate, The Huffington Post, Politico, @samyoungman, @g_r_e_g, @declanm, @noltenc, @postreid, @dcplod, @romenesko, @aaronblakewp and FishbowlDC

Tom Shevlin / Street Fight:

Could Patch Find New Life as a SaaS Platform for Local Publishers? — It's hard to tell exactly what's going on at AOL headquarters these days when it comes to Patch, the company's erstwhile, overly ambitious experiment in hyperlocal news. By most accounts, it appears that AOL boss Tim Armstrong …

Discussion: Folio